Myanmar's role in Iron Age interaction networks linking Southeast Asia and India: Recent glass and copper-base metal exchange research from the Mission Archéologique Française au Myanmar

Abstract

With 2228km of Bay of Bengal coastline, Myanmar occupies a critical geographic position at the juncture of South and East Asia, but its role in the burgeoning long-distance interaction networks of the mid-late 1st millennium BC is poorly understood due to a low research density. From 2001–2011 the Mission Archéologique Française au Myanmar excavated a series of Iron Age cemeteries in the Samon Valley of central Myanmar. In this paper we present a regionally-original combination of elemental and isotopic analyses from glass and copper-base metal grave goods. These data demonstrate that local populations were participating, however indirectly, in glass exchange systems linking the Ganges River valley to central and peninsular Thailand and southern Vietnam, and shared a raw copper metal supply with settlements on the bank of the Mekong River in northeast Thailand. These broad cultural contacts, particularly those with India, may have played a role in stimulating the formation of Myanmar's first states in the early centuries AD.